Abstract
Research background: Despite the economic development, accompanied by various structural reforms (including pension reform of 1999), the effective retirement age in Poland is relatively low. Participants of the social insurance scheme tend to apply for the old-age pension as soon as possible (when they reach the statutory retirement age).
 Purpose of the article: The main aim of the paper is to evaluate the determinants of the economic activity of seniors in Poland taking the old-age pension form Social Insurance Institution (ZUS) as a regular or occasional work, in comparison to those who are not performing any paid activity.
 Methods: We use the data from the survey carried out in 2018 on the representative sample of Polish seniors aged 65+ for whose households the old-age pension from ZUS (1336 pensioners who retired between 1980?s up to 2018) is the main source of income. Multinominal logistic regression was performed to study how gender, retirement timing, education level and period of retirement as well as reasons for retirement influenced the likelihood to continue regular or occasional work.
 Findings & Value added: Multinominal logistic regression for women confirms that higher education increases chances for continuing regular work on the retirement comparing to those having secondary education. Retirement due to the reaching the pensionable age made women more likely to continue work on regular basis, while those who retired due to the bankruptcy of the employer were less likely to be employed during retirement. Retirement due to the preservation of pension privileges increased chances to continue work on the occasional basis among women and men. For men who reported employment - related factors as retirement drivers, the chances of performing occasional work were high and of highly statistical significant. This research delivers knowledge on drivers of regular or occasional paid activity combined with receiving old-age pension from social insurance system in Poland.
Highlights
Economic activity of older workers and its determinants has been important issue in the scientific research (Duval, 2003; Hamblin, 2013) and in public policies (OECD, 1995; European Commission, 2012, Eurofund, 2016, OECD, 2018)
We start with the review of the literature on flexible attitude to retirement and its drivers, as well as we briefly describe the Polish situation concerning the changes on the labour market and in the public pension scheme
Women who retired after the statutory retirement age were more likely to continue paid work in both forms
Summary
Economic activity of older workers and its determinants has been important issue in the scientific research (Duval, 2003; Hamblin, 2013) and in public policies (OECD, 1995; European Commission, 2012, Eurofund, 2016, OECD, 2018). During the last twenty years, a lot of public policies aimed at prolonging working lives of workers 50+ by labour market reforms (promoting employment) and pension reforms (increasing pensionable age, phasing-out early retirement, introducing flexible forms of retirement). These changes had contributed to the increase in effective retirement age in OECD counties from 63/61 to 65/63 for men and women respectively but they still stand below the levels of 1970’s (OECD 2018). Registered economic activity of persons receiving the old-age pension from social insurance in Poland is very low (12%), which might suggest that transition from work to retirement is rather permanent than flexible, which is more likely to happen in highly developed countries. The main objective of our research is to evaluate determinants of the economic activity of seniors who claimed for an old-age pension form Social Insurance Institution (ZUS) as a regular or occasional work in comparison to those who are not performing any paid activity
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